Tweet A man with a machine gun has been following me for the last five days. His name is Zia, and he is very, very shy, especially for a man with a machine gun. He first started shadowing me in the town of Chitral, near the end...

Tweet When I tell people that my favorite country thus far has been Pakistan, I often receive horrified stares, as if I’ve just admitted that I enjoy licking squirrels or pooping in jam jars. But what people don’t realize is t...

Tweet Nearly two months have passed since my ill-fated journey to Bahawalpur, since my sixteen-hour CIA interrogation in a dirty, Pakistani hotel room, since they threatened to shut down my website if I publicized the story. I’...

Tweet It was a dangerous idea to try to go to Peshawar, but its Siren’s call promised romance, intrigue, and adventure: a legendary Silk Road city of traders, warriors, and poets, a place where a hairy Pashtun might offer you f...

Tweet The afternoon sun slanted across the District Chief of Police’s office as he sat glowering at me in his oversized armchair, gnashing his teeth like some rabid, Pashtun muppet. Sitting in his line of fire, I smiled at noth...

Tweet For this week’s special Photo Travelogue, there won’t be any happy postcards. Nor will I be striking wacky, douchebag poses in front of historical buildings. Nor will you see the usual cheery colors and smiling kiddies fr...

Tweet I would have posted this last Wednesday, but I just so happened to be ankle-deep in yak shit with some nomadic, yurt-dwelling family, near the border of the vowel-impaired nation of Kyrgyzstan… But better late than ...

Tweet I find it ironic, and embarrassingly hypocritical, that not even a week after I ranted about how you should never get into cars with strangers, I turned around and did exactly that. It was noon, and the heat of June shimm...

Tweet Laughing in the face of Travel Warnings and a threat from the Taliban, I head north into Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to visit the indigenous Black Kalash Tribe and to see their annu...

Tweet “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life…” – Jack Kerouac In a wild outpost town of eastern Baltistan, two days’ journey by road into the ja...